Are All Tools Equal? Are All Mantras? [was Matangi]

[Guest guest]

Thank you, Sarabhanga, that is a good and vivid illustration of your

point.

 

But does it resolve the "are all mantras equal" question?

 

Let me repay your kindness with a small story of my own. My father,

now gone more than three years, was a woodworker of great skill and

delicacy. When I was a child, he was building fine furniture --

beautiful, graceful tables, chairs, cabinets, etc. When I was a

youth, he'd moved on to building clocks, with marvelously intricate

casings and tiny fine details and filigrees. By the time I was an

adult he'd left both of these behind and was doing straight

woodcarving. That gave him the freedom to retire in comfort --

corporate CEO's and high government officials paid him well for

these lifelife birds of prey and whatnot to display in their

McMansions and/or corner offices. He died having achieved a

considerable measure of renown in the woodcarving field.

 

When he was dying, I asked him why he hadn't started with

woodcarvings, since these are obviously what made him happiest. The

othr things often seemed like work, but the woodcarvings were pure

pleasure for him. Did he not have the skill when he was younger?

 

He told me, "It was not so much that I lacked the skill; I lacked

the money to buy the best tools. When I built furniture with my

cheap, blunt tools, I earned money to buy better tools and then I

could make finer things like clocks. When I sold the clocks, they

earned my the money to buy still finer tools, with greater precision

and made with more delicacy and better metals. Then I could make

anything at all."

 

I asked him, "So tools are more important than talent?"

 

He said, "They go hand in hand. A person without talent will not be

helped much, even by the best tools. But a person of true talent can

be limited by bad tools. One who has both talent and the best tools

is just unstoppable."

 

So. That is just one man's opinion, and he wasn't talking about

mantras. But I see the lesson as similar.

 

In your example, a talented man working with poor tools nonetheless

managed to get you from Point A to Point B. He did what he could --

in a pinch, he was able to save the day.

 

But in the long run, in the world of mantras, isn't it also true

that -- at a certain point -- we want more than simply limping from

Point A to Point B? Isn't there a certain point where the

right "tools" can be the difference between riding in an old,

coughing jalopy, and soaring first class in a supersonic jet (so to

speak? And if this is so, though both mantras will ultimately get

you to your goal, are some not "more equal" than others?

 

(I am not arguing that they necessarily are, by the way. My question

is not rhetorical but very honest. I would like to know your

opinion. As well as that of any other members who care to chime in.

 

Thank you

 

DB

 

, "Sarabhanga Giri"

<sarabhanga> wrote:

>

> Namaste DB,

>

> On a recent trip by (old) car into the Himalaya, our clutch

> (previously slipping) was destroyed on a steep hill in the

forest.

> The next day, a village mechanic removed the engine and replaced

the

> clutch in a few hours, and we were on our way again. The only

tools

> this skillful mechanic used were: a large, bent, and badly

> burred "screwdriver", and a hammer.

>

> What you have is not so important as what you do with it!